CONVERSION,MOBILITYANDTHE ROMANINQUISITIONINITALY … · 2000).On Jewish religious border-crossing,see YosefH.Yerushalmi,FromSpan-ish Court to Italian Ghetto: Isaac Cardoso. A Study

CONVERSION, MOBILITYAND THEROMAN INQUISITION IN ITALY

AROUND 1600*

Early modern Europe was a world on the move, where travellersand merchants, soldiers and pilgrims, men and women met on theroads every day.1 Many left their homes for journeys short or long,and they did so for a variety of reasons — travelling as part of theirwork or to look for work, or fleeing plague or religious repres-sion. Some had more personal motives: they wished to improvetheir lot, or to escape the narrowness of village life or an unhappymarriage.

In their travels, men and women crossed cultural, religious orconfessional borders.2 With the advent of the Reformation, a

* This article is based on postdoctoral research carried out during the 2004/5 aca-demic year. The research was funded by a grant from the Schweizerischer National-fond and benefited from collaboration with the Modern History Faculty of theUniversity of Oxford. I gratefully acknowledge Lyndal Roper and Judith Poll-mann, who have followed my research with interest and been the source ofmany stimulating and helpful discussions. I would also like to thank GingerA. Diekmann for improving my English.

1 Paraphrased from Klaus J. Bade, Europa in Bewegung: Migration vom spaten 18.Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart (Munich, 2000), 14. Historical research of the last fif-teen years has shown that society was far more mobile than French historiographyon migration has traditionally assumed. See Leslie Page Moch, Moving Europeans:Migration in Western Europe since 1650 (Bloomington, 1992); Laurence Fontaine, ‘Glistudi sulla mobilita in Europa nell’eta moderna: problemi e prospettive di ricerca’,Quaderni storici, xxxi (1996). For French research, see Jacques Dupaquier, ‘Macro-migrations en Europe (XVIe–XVIIIe siecles)’, in Simonetta Cavaciocchi (ed.), Lemigrazioni in Europa, secc. XIII–XVIII (Florence, 1994); Jean Pierre Poussou, ‘Del’interet de l’etude historique des mouvements migratoires europeens du milieu duMoyen-Age a la fin du XIXe siecle’, ibid.

2 On religious border-crossing, see Eszter Andor and Istvan Gyorgy Toth (eds.),Frontiers of Faith: Religious Exchange and the Constitution of Religious Identities, 1400–1750 (Budapest 2001). For the northern confessional context, see Etienne Francois,Die unsichtbare Grenze: Protestanten und Katholiken in Augsburg, 1648–1806 (Sigma-ringen, 1991); Duane Corpis, ‘The Geography of Religious Conversion: Crossing theBoundaries of Belief in Southern Germany, 1648–1800’ (New York Univ. Ph.D.thesis, 2001); Keith P. Luria, Sacred Boundaries: Religious Coexistence and Conflictin Early Modern France (Washington DC, 2005). For Protestant–Catholic border-crossing in Italy, see Irene Fosi, ‘Viaggio in Italia e conversioni: analisi di un binomio’,Romische historische Mitteilungen, xxx (1988); Irene Fosi, ‘Roma e gli ‘‘Ultramontani’’:conversioni, viaggi, identita’, Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archivenund Bibliotheken, lxxxi (2001); Peter Schmidt, ‘L’Inquisizione e gli stranieri’, in

Past and Present, no. 200 (August 2008) � The Past and Present Society, Oxford, 2008

doi:10.1093/pastj/gtn012

(cont. on p. 6)

wholly new problem emerged within Catholic Europe, for nowmigrants traversed territories belonging to different confessions.Travellers in the Mediterranean region had long encounteredthe religious worlds of Christianity, Islam and Judaism. A journeyfrom Tripoli in Lebanon to Venice meant leaving Muslim andentering Catholic territory. In Italy, migrants from the OttomanEmpire were confronted with a society unfamiliar with the statusof the dhimmi, and if they were taken for renegades or New Chris-tians they even risked persecution by the Roman Inquisition.How did travellers and migrants react when faced with otherreligious cultures? How did they integrate into a new society?How important were changes of religion in this process? If theyconverted, how did religious, social and economic considerationsdetermine their religious choice? And how clear-cut was thenewly adopted religious identity?

This article takes up these questions by way of a detailed casestudy focusing on the story of Mariana di Fiori, a Jewish womanfrom Poland who immigrated to Italy from Danzig via Tripoli.Mariana converted to Christianity under remarkable circum-stances and was later denounced to the Sant’Ufficio or HolyOffice in Rome by her husband in 1623 because he suspected herof apostasy.3 The trial initiated thereupon reveals a fascinating life

(n. 2 cont.)

L’Inquisizione e gli storici: un cantiere aperto. Tavola rotonda nell’ambito della Con-ferenza annuale della Ricerca (Rome, 2000); Peter Schmidt, ‘Fernhandel undromische Inquisition: ‘‘interkulturelles Management’’ im konfessionellen Zeital-ter’, in Hubert Wolf (ed.), Inquisition, Index, Zensur: Wissenskulturen der Neuzeit imWiderstreit (Paderborn, 2001). For the Christian–Muslim context, see Lucia Ros-tagno, Mi faccio turco: esperienze ed immagini dell’Islam nell’Italia moderna (Rome,1983); Lucile and Bartolome Bennassar, Les Chretiens d’Allah: l’histoire extraor-dinaire des renegats, XVI e–XVIIe siecles (Paris, 1989); Molly Greene, A SharedWorld: Christians and Muslims in the Early Modern Mediterranean (Princeton,2000). On Jewish religious border-crossing, see Yosef H. Yerushalmi, From Span-ish Court to Italian Ghetto: Isaac Cardoso. A Study in Seventeenth-Century Marran-ism and Jewish Apologetics (New York and London, 1971); Brian Pullan, The Jews ofEurope and the Inquisition of Venice, 1550–1670 (London and New York, 1983);Kaspar von Greyerz, ‘Portuguese Conversos on the Upper Rhine and the Con-verso Community of Sixteenth-Century Europe’, Social Hist., xiv (1989); Jona-than I. Israel, Diasporas within a Diaspora: Jews, Crypto-Jews and the World ofMaritime Empires (1540–1740) (Leiden, 2002).

3 The dossier of the case is kept in the Archivio della Congregazione per la Dottrinadella Fede, Vatican City (hereafter ACDF), stanza storica, M 5-m, fasc. Roma 1624.The relevant decrees are in ACDF, stanza storica, Decreta 1624. The trial in Romewas preceded by interrogations at the Venetian Sant’Ufficio. Thanks to Pier CesareIoly Zorattini’s work, this part of the trial is available in a critical edition: see Processi del

6 PAST AND PRESENT NUMBER 200

(cont. on p. 7)

that provides rich material for a case study on the interconnec-tions between conversion and mobility in early modern Europe.The story of Mariana shows that her encounter with a differentreligious world created a field of tensions in which she repeatedlyhad to choose between adapting to a new faith and preserving anold faith. Her conversion did not result in a clear, new religiousidentity, but in ambivalence and tension.

Historians have become increasingly interested in the topic ofconversion in recent years. A growing number of studies inves-tigate conversions in the confessional era,4 inter-religious conver-sions to and from Christianity, Judaism and Islam,5 conversionnarratives,6 and the relationship between mobility and conver-sion.7 However, we still know very little about the social and

(n. 3 cont.)

S. Uffizio di Venezia contro ebrei e giudaizzanti (hereafter Processi), ed. Pier Cesare IolyZorattini, 14 vols. (Florence, 1980–99), ix, 1608–1632, 85–94 [¼Archivio di Stato diVenezia, Sant’Uffizio, Processi, b. 79, fos. 1r–12v], and xiii, Appendici, 137–8. IolyZorattini discusses Mariana’s case in the introduction to vol. ix (see ‘Introduzione’,26–8). The case is also mentioned by Maddalena del Bianco Cotrozzi in ‘‘‘O Senorguardara mina alma’’: aspetti della religiosita femminile nei processi del S. Uffizioveneziano’, in Pier Cesare Ioly Zorattini (ed.), L’identita dissimulata: giudaizzanti ibericinell’Europa cristiana dell’eta moderna (Florence, 2000), 263. However, neither IolyZorattini nor Cotrozzi was aware of the Roman part of the trial. The discovery ofthese documents makes possible a new reconstruction of the case. Some questionsremain open, though, and I hope to present the findings of further research at alater stage.

4 Michael C. Questier, Conversion, Politics and Religion in England, 1580–1625(Cambridge, 1996); Keith Luria, ‘The Politics of Protestant Conversion to Catholi-cism in Seventeenth-Century France’, in Peter van der Veer (ed.), Conversion to Mod-ernities: The Globalization of Christianity (New York and London, 1996).

5 See Bennassar and Bennassar, Les Chretiens d’Allah; Mercedes Garcıa-Arenal,Conversions islamiques: identites religieuses en islam mediterraneen (Paris, 2001);Christopher M. Clark, The Politics of Conversion: Missionary Protestantism and theJews in Prussia, 1728–1941 (Oxford, 1995); Elisheva Carlebach, Divided Souls:Converts from Judaism in Germany, 1500–1750 (New Haven and London, 2003);Richard R. Popkin and Martin Mulsow (eds.), Secret Conversions to Judaism in EarlyModern Europe (Leiden, 2004); Kenneth Mills and Anthony Grafton (eds.), Conver-sion: Old Worlds and New (Rochester, NY, 2003); Kenneth Mills and Anthony Grafton(eds.), Conversion in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Seeing and Believing(Rochester, NY, 2003).

6 Patricia Caldwell, The Puritan Conversion Narrative: The Beginnings of AmericanExpression (Cambridge, 1983); D. Bruce Hindmarsh, The Evangelical Conversion Nar-rative: Spiritual Autobiography in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2005).

7 Corpis, ‘Geography of Religious Conversion’; see also Beat Hodler, ‘Konver-sionen und der Handlungsspielraum der Untertanen in der Eidgenossenschaft imZeitalter der reformierten Orthodoxie’, in Heinrich R. Schmidt, Andre Holensteinand Andreas Wurgler (eds.), Gemeinde, Reformation und Widerstand: Festschrift furPeter Blickle zum 60. Geburtstag (Tubingen, 1998), esp. 290–1. For Italy, see Fosi,

CONVERSION, MOBILITY AND THE ROMAN INQUISITION 7

(cont. on p. 8)

cultural histories of converts, and the historiographic potential ofthe subject of conversions has yet to be assessed.

It is in the context of Jewish history that the religious identitiesof converts have been discussed most intensively. Here, scholarshave debated whether the Iberian conversos essentially remainedJews who practised their faith in secret, or whether they becamecommitted Christians. Cecil Roth and others have assumed acontinuity of Jewish faith, handed down secretly from generationto generation,8 while other historians have radically questionedthe existence of crypto-Judaism.9 Today’s historiography hasreplaced these positions with a more differentiated picture.10

Whether a converso became a committed Christian, secretly ad-hered to Judaism or reconverted openly in exile was first andforemost a matter of individual choice.11

Although the history of conversos is characterized by develop-ments specific to the Iberian peninsula, it can shed a great deal of

(n. 7 cont.)

‘Roma e gli ‘‘Ultramontani’’ ’, and, most recently, Ricarda Matheus, ‘Mobilitat undKonversion: Uberlegungen aus romischer Perspektive’, Quellen und Forschungen ausitalienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken, lxxxv (2005). More research has been carriedout on confessional migration. See, for example, Heinz Schilling, ‘ConfessionalMigration as a Distinct Type of Old European Long-Distance Migration’, inCavaciocchi (ed.), Le migrazioni in Europa; Alexander Schunka, ‘Exulanten inKursachsen im 17. Jahrhundert’, Herbergen der Christenheit: Jahrbuch fur deutscheKirchengeschichte, xxvii (2003); Alexander Schunka, ‘Exulanten, Konvertiten,Arme und Fremde: Zuwanderer aus der Habsburgermonarchie in Kursachsenim 17. Jahrhundert’, Fruhneuzeit-Info, xiv (2003). On the relationship betweenmobility and conversion in the context of Jewish history, see Gayle K. Brunelle,‘Migration and Religious Identity: The Portuguese of Seventeenth-CenturyRouen’, Jl Early Mod. Hist., vii (2003); Yerushalmi, From Spanish Court to ItalianGhetto; Pullan, Jews of Europe; Israel, Diasporas within a Diaspora.

8 Cecil Roth, A History of the Marranos (1932; New York and Philadelphia, 1959).For a more nuanced view, see Israel S. Revah, ‘L’Heresie marrane dans l’Europecatholique du 15e au 18e siecle’, in Jacques Le Goff (ed.), Heresies et societes dansl’Europe pre-industrielle, 11e–18e siecles (Paris, 1968), and Israel S. Revah, ‘Les Mar-ranes’, Revue des etudes juives, cxviii (1959–60). Within this tradition, see also HaimBeinart,Conversos onTrial:The Inquisition inCiudadReal (Jerusalem,1981), esp. 23,242.

9 Benzion Netanyahu, The Marranos of Spain: From the Late 14th to the Early 16thCentury, According to Contemporary Hebrew Sources (1966; 3rd edn, Ithaca andLondon, 1999); Antonio Jose Saraiva, The Marrano Factory: The Portuguese Inquisitionand its New Christians, 1536–1765, ed. and trans. H. P. Salomon and I. S. D. Sassoon(Leiden, 2001), first published as Inquisicao e Cristaos-Novos (Lisbon, 1969). For acritique of Netanyahu, see, for example, David Abulafia, 1492: The Expulsion fromSpain and Jewish Identity (London, 1992).

10 See, for example, David Graizbord, Souls in Dispute: Converso Identities in Iberiaand the Jewish Diaspora, 1580–1700 (Philadelphia, 2004).

11 Pullan, Jews of Europe, chs. 11–13.


light on early modern changes of religion in general. It demon-strates the mobility of converts and the wavering of their religiousidentity. Thus far, however, there have been few efforts to connectthe historical research on conversion with that on conversos. Whilethe former is just beginning to expand, the latter has been exam-ining problems of conversion for quite some time. Bringing bothinto perspective, this article aims to identify and discuss sharedaspects. The protagonist of this case study is a Jewish woman whohas much in common with Iberian conversos, although her reli-gious choices are in many respects comparable to other inter-religious and interconfessional conversions.

Many historians have described Iberian conversos as potentialdwellers between religious worlds. They did not belong fully toeither, yet could still exist in both.12 This description, I shallargue, applies to Mariana’s case, but it does not go far enough.It is true that she was familiar with both religious worlds and thatshe wavered between the two. Ultimately, however, these worldsremained incompatible. Rather than a hybrid faith, she experi-enced a juxtaposition of two different worlds from which she hadto choose.

Mariana’s religious choices were embedded in a complex indi-vidual biography. As early as 1983, Brian Pullan argued that thereligious identities of conversos should be investigated as individ-ual cases.13 He did not, however, exhaust the potential of bio-graphical studies, for even more subtly nuanced interpretationsare possible. Only a detailed reading of a life history can showhow religious choices, individual experiences, mobility, marriageand work were interwoven with each other. Each of these aspectscould be investigated individually by considering the Inquisi-tion trials against giudaizzanti14 or bigamists.15 In this sense,Mariana’s case is not exceptional. Her story differs from others,however, in the density of narrative elements that it brings to-gether. Like a magnifying glass the case illuminates aspects ofa past where the history of the Jewish diaspora, migration,

12 Ibid., 207–9; Graizbord, Souls in Dispute, 2; David M. Gitlitz, Secrecy and Deceit:The Religion of the Crypto-Jews (Albuquerque, 2003), 84, with numerous other refer-ences provided.

13 Pullan, Jews of Europe, 206.14 Processi; Ioly Zorattini (ed.), L’identita dissimulata.15 Kim Siebenhuner, Bigamie und Inquisition in Italien, 1600–1750 (Paderborn,

2006), 121–7, 198–201.


marriage, faith and the Roman Inquisition intersect. Mariana’sstory shows what it meant to change religion in this specific histor-ical environment. This article, then, offers insights into the com-plexity of conversions and the tensions they inspired in earlymodern Europe. The first section outlines the historical contextof the Inquisition trial, and the second describes Mariana’s story,as far as it is reflected in the court records. The third section setsout the problem of her husband’s report. The fourth and fifthsections analyse Mariana’s religious choices, and the last broad-ens the perspective, taking into consideration current research onconversions.

I

On 7 February 1623, Giovanni Domenico Morcante, 30 yearsof age and a hatter by trade, denounced his wife Mariana to theSant’Ufficio in Rome for the offence of ‘Judaizing’.16 Eighteenmonths passed before the Sant’Ufficio began to investigate theseaccusations more closely. During this time Mariana had beentracked down in Venice and brought to Rome, where she wenton trial in September 1624.

The inquisitors’ interest in the case was closely linked to thehistorical evolution of their institution.17 The Sant’Ufficio hadbeen established to quell the Protestant movement on Italian soil.Thus, the Roman Inquisition differed from that on the Iberianpeninsula, the main purpose of which was the control and perse-cution of Jews and conversos. In Italy, however, it was only in thecourse of the sixteenth century that the Inquisition began to per-secute these groups. From a legal point of view, the Inquisitionconfined itself to heretics and heresy suspects and thus — at leasttheoretically — to the Christian population. A heretic was definedas a Christian who persistently adhered to a fallacy of faith.‘Unbelievers’ such as Jews and Muslims were thus not subject tothe jurisdiction of the Roman Inquisition.18

16 ACDF, stanza storica, M 5-m, fasc. Roma 1624, fo. 450r.17 For the history of the Roman Inquisition, see Adriano Prosperi, Tribunali della

coscienza: inquisitori, confessori, missionari (Turin, 1996); Giovanni Romeo, L’inquisizionenell’Italia moderna (Rome and Bari, 2002); John Tedeschi, The Prosecution of Heresy:Collected Studies on the Inquisition in Early Modern Italy (Binghamton, 1991).

18 Franceso Albizzi, De inconstantia in iure admittenda vel non (Amsterdam, 1683),cap. 11, nos. 4 and 24; see also Francesco Beretta, Galilee devant le Tribunal del’Inquisition: une relecture des sources (Fribourg, 1998), 93–7.


Despite this definition, the Sant’Ufficio claimed responsibilityfor various concerns involving Jews or converted Jews.19 Jews whoexpressed doubts about dogmas shared by the Jewish and theChristian religions, as well as Jews who criticized Catholic beliefs,showed disrespect towards Christian images and crucifixes, blas-phemed God, proselytized or — even worse — prevented otherJews from converting to Christianity, could be persecuted by theRoman Inquisition. Close contacts between Jews and Christians,such as visiting Christian prostitutes and employing Christianservants in Jewish households, were also suspect.20 ConvertedJews, on the other hand, could be prosecuted for practisingJewish rituals or returning to Judaism. In the documents of theInquisition such sympathy with Judaism is referred to as ‘apos-tasy’ or ‘Judaizing’.

This offence never reached the proportions in Italy that it did inSpain or Portugal. On the whole, trials against giudaizzanti re-mained rare.21 Yet the problem of Judaizing became more andmore urgent in cities with large Jewish communities such asVenice, Livorno, Pisa, Ferrara and Rome, where many Iberianconversos had settled in the course of the sixteenth century.

Numerous Jews and conversos had come to Italy from theIberian peninsula in the wake of the events of the late fifteenthand early sixteenth centuries.22 The edicts of expulsion of 1492and 1497 gave the Iberian Jews exile as an alternative to con-version, leading to a wave of emigration.23 A second wave of

19 Adriano Prosperi, ‘L’Inquisizione romana e gli ebrei’, in Michele Luzzati (ed.),L’Inquisizione e gli ebrei in Italia (Rome and Bari, 1994); Nicholas Davidson, ‘The In-quisition and the Italian Jews’, in Stephen Haliczer (ed.), Inquisition and Society inEarly Modern Europe (London and Sydney, 1987).

20 Prattica per procedere nelle cause del S. Offizio, ed. Alfonso Mirto in ‘Un inedito delSeicento sull’Inquisizione’, Nouvelles de la republique des lettres, i (1986), 128–32.

21 See John Tedeschi and William Monter, ‘Toward a Statistical Profile of the ItalianInquisitions: Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries’, in Tedeschi, Prosecution of Heresy.

22 Jonathan I. Israel, ‘The Marrani in Italy, the Greek Lands and the OttomanNear East’, in his Diasporas within a Diaspora; Renata Segre, ‘Sephardic Settlementsin Sixteenth-Century Italy: A Historical and Geographical Survey’, in Alisa MeyuhasGinio (ed.), Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the Mediterranean World after 1492(London, 1992). For an overview of the history of Jews in Italy, see Corrado Vivanti(ed.), Gli ebrei in Italia, 2 vols. (Turin, 1996–7); Anna Foa, The Jews of Europe after theBlack Death, trans. Andrea Grover (Berkeley, 2000); Roberto Bonfil, Jewish Life inRenaissance Italy, trans. Anthony Oldcorn (Los Angeles and London, 1994); AttilioMilano, Storia degli ebrei in Italia (Turin, 1963); Cecil Roth, The History of the Jews ofItaly (Philadelphia, 1946).

23 R. D. Barnett (ed.), The Jews in Spain and Portugal before and after the Expulsion of1492 (London, 1971); Norman Roth, Conversos, Inquisition, and the Expulsion of the


(cont. on p. 12)

emigration followed the establishment of the Portuguese Inqui-sition in 1536 and its mass persecutions in subsequent decades.The Papal States and other Italian states received these immi-grants willingly. When New Christians were found to be practis-ing their former religion secretly or returning to Judaism, manyItalian princes took steps to save these individuals from theclutches of the Inquisition. They also guaranteed far-reachingprivileges to New Christians with respect to business, mobilityand taxation. After all, these immigrants were often wealthy mer-chants and internationally connected people who could benefitthe domestic market.24 For example, Pope Paul III (1534–51)encouraged Sephardic, Levantine, Turkish and other merchantsto trade in the port of Ancona, and prohibited the prosecution ofNew Christians for heresy without explicit papal order.25 Theduke of Tuscany Cosimo I granted similar privileges in 1549, asdid Ercole II of Ferrara in 1550.26

This leniency towards Iberian conversos during the 1540s and1550s ended with the Counter-Reformational ambitions of thepopes. The new concern for confessional purity was bound to re-shape Jewish–Christian relationships as well. In the second half ofthe sixteenth century, the popes issued several bulls aimed atconfining Jews within ghettos, on the one hand, and promotingtheir conversion to Christianity, on the other.27 As early as 1543

(n. 23 cont.)

Jews from Spain (Madison, 1995);Elie Kedourie (ed.), Spain and the Jews: The SephardiExperience, 1492 and After (London, 1992); Raymond B. Waddington and Arthur H.Williamson (eds.), The Expulsion of the Jews: 1492 and After (New York and London,1994).

24 Benjamin Ravid, ‘ATale of Three Cities and their Raison d’Etat: Ancona, Venice,Livorno, and the Competition for Jewish Merchants in the Sixteenth Century’, inGinio (ed.), Jews, Christians, and Muslims.

25 Aron di Leone Leoni, ‘Per una storia della nazione portoghese ad Ancona e aPesaro’, in Ioly Zorattini (ed.), L’identita dissimulata; Shlomo Simonsohn, The Apos-tolic See and the Jews, vii, History (Toronto, 1991), 448–50.

26 On Tuscany, see Lucia Frattarelli Fischer, ‘Cristiani Nuovi e Nuovi Ebreiin Toscana fra Cinque e Seicento: legittimazioni e percorsi individuali’, in IolyZorattini (ed.), L’identita dissimulata; on Ferrara, see Renata Segre, ‘La formazionedi una comunita marrana: i portoghesi a Ferrara’, in Vivanti (ed.), Gli Ebrei in Italia.Other states granted similar privileges, such as Milan in 1435, 1533 and 1580, Mantuain 1522 and Savoy in 1572: see Davidson, ‘Inquisition and the Italian Jews’, 31.

27 Kenneth R. Stow, Catholic Thought and Papal Jewry Policy, 1555–1593 (New York,1977), esp. ch. 1; Kenneth R. Stow, ‘The Papacy and the Jews: Catholic Reformationand Beyond’, Jewish Hist., vi (1992); Renata Segre, ‘La Controriforma: espulsioni, con-versioni, isolamento’, in Vivanti (ed.), Gli ebrei in Italia, i, as well as Jorg Deventer,‘Zwischen Ausweisung, Repression und Duldung: die Judenpolitik der ‘‘Reformpapste’’


(cont. on p. 13)

the Casa dei catecumeni was established in Rome, a house wherefuture converts were instructed in the Catholic faith and preparedfor baptism.28 In the bull Cum nimis absurdum of 1555, the Jewsof the Papal States were ordered to wear the Jewish badge and tolive in the newly established Roman ghetto. In 1556, Paul IV(1555–9) declared New Christians who returned to Judaism inItaly to be apostates. And in 1569, the Jews were expelled fromthe Papal States, with the exception of Rome and Ancona.29 Eventhough future popes did not enforce this policy consistently, itwas characteristic of the new climate. In the long run, the Italianstates could not ignore this policy.30 More and more Jews andconversos could be taken to court.

II

Thus when Mariana was accused in 1624 of Judaizing, it was notan exceptional occurrence. Her story raises issues of conversionand religious identity similar to those of the conversos as well, yetMariana was not an Iberian conversa, nor were the circumstancesof her baptism comparable to the mass baptisms in Spain andPortugal.

Mariana left her home town of Danzig around 1600, when shewas about 13 years old. She began a long journey that took heracross eastern Europe and ended in Tripoli di Soria, the present-day city of Tripoli in Lebanon. We know little about the back-ground to this enormous geographical leap. Who accompaniedMariana? Did her family have social or economic ties to Tripoli?No European ruler had protected the Jews like the Polish kingsdid. Although a free city such as Danzig did not share this tolerant

(n. 27 cont.)

im Kirchenstaat (ca. 1550–1605)’, Aschkenas: Zeitschrift fur Geschichte und Kultur derJuden, xiv (2004).

28 Domenico Rocciolo, ‘Documenti sui catecumeni e neofiti a Roma nel Seicentoe Settecento’, Ricerche per la storia religiosa di Roma, x (1998), esp. 393–4; MarinaCaffiero, Battesimi forzati: storie di ebrei, cristiani e convertiti nella Roma dei papi(Roma, 2004), 22.

29 Segre, ‘La Controriforma’, 714–33; Milano, Storia degli ebrei, 244–62; Prosperi,‘L’Inquisizione romana’, esp. 78; Roth, History of the Jews of Italy, 294–309.

30 In the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, most of the Italian statesestablished ghettos. See Bonfil, Jewish Life in Renaissance Italy, 71–2; Roth, History ofthe Jews of Italy, 309–53.


policy towards Jews, the situation worsened only in 1616, afterMariana had already left.31

Still, the Near East was not an unusual destination, since re-ligious minorities were tolerated and protected by Islamic law.During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the sultans had ac-tively encouraged the immigration of Jews and their settlement inthe Ottoman Empire.32 These territories were major destinationsfor persecuted conversos from Spain and Portugal. In the NearEast, on the Greek peninsula and in the Balkans, Jewish commu-nities grew through the immigration of conversos. As JonathanIsrael has shown, a unique network of merchants, bankers andbrokers developed in these places, connecting the worlds ofIslam, Christianity and the New World. Tripoli, too, had a largeJewish community and important connections with Cyprus andthe Aegean.33

Around 1603, when Mariana was about 16 years old, she mar-ried her Jewish husband, Aaron, in Tripoli. Three years later, in1606, the couple decided to set off for Venice; why, we do notknow. Venice was known for its generous acceptance of Jewsfrom the Levant: from 1541 Levantine merchants were officiallyallowed to reside and trade there. The reasons for this positionwere primarily economic. Venice’s economic pre-eminence in theMediterranean had suffered ever since the discovery of a directsea route to India, and cities such as Ancona and Florence wereincreasingly competing with the maritime republic. Venice hadto rely on Levantine merchants who operated as brokers in theEast in order to maintain the traditionally strong commercialrelations with the Ottoman Empire.34

31 Samuel Echt, Die Geschichte der Juden in Danzig (Leer, 1972), 13–31.32 Avigdor Levy, ‘Introduction’, in Avigdor Levy (ed.), The Jews of the Ottoman

Empire (Princeton, 1994), esp. 1–31; Halil Inalcik, ‘Foundations of Ottoman–JewishCooperation’, in Avigdor Levy (ed.), Jews, Turks, Ottomans: A Shared History, Fifteenththrough the Twentieth Century (Syracuse, 2002); Aryeh Shmuelevitz, The Jews of theOttoman Empire in the Late Fifteenth and the Sixteenth Centuries: Administrative, Eco-nomic, Legal, and Social Relations as Reflected in the Responsa (Leiden, 1984); C. E.Bosworth, ‘The Concept of Dhimma in Early Islam’, in Benjamin Braude andBernard Lewis (eds.), Christians and Jews in the Ottoman Empire: The Functioning ofa Plural Society, 2 vols. (New York and London, 1982).

33 Israel, Diasporas within a Diaspora, 41–65, esp. 49.34 Bernard D. Cooperman, ‘Venetian Policy towards Levantine Jews and its Broader

Italian Context’, in Gaetano Cozzi (ed.), Gli ebrei e Venezia, secoli XIV–XVIII: attidel Convegno internazionale organizzato dall’Istituto di storia della societa e dello statoveneziano della Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venezia, Isola di San Giorgio Maggiore,


(cont. on p. 15)

Mariana and Aaron, however, never arrived in Venice, becausetheir ship was captured in the Mediterranean Sea during thevoyage. Both were taken to Malta and sold into slavery, an eventless extraordinary than it appears at first glance. Piracy was a real-istic threat to all Mediterranean travellers in the sixteenth andseventeenth centuries. Taking captives as slaves was part of theongoing conflict between the Habsburgs and the Ottomans, andwas practised on both sides. Merchant fleets and passenger shipswere just as prized as warships because their cargo — goods andpeople — promised considerable profits from sale or ransom.35

Considering that Mariana and Aaron were taken to Malta, theirship presumably fell into the hands of Maltese corsairs.36 As theseat of the Order of the Knights of St John since 1530, the islandwas regarded as both a Christian outpost against Islam in theMediterranean and a centre for transferring captives in the handsof Christian masters.37 It was the mission of the knights to pro-tect the Christian coasts against raids by the corsari barbareschiandotherOttomanattacks.For theseventures theknights alsoen-listed corsairs.38 Captives taken by the Order’s fleet or by corsairs

(n. 34 cont.)

5–10 giugno 1983 (Milan, 1987); Benjamin Arbel, ‘Jews in International Trade: TheEmergence of the Levantines and Ponentines’, in Robert C. Davis and BenjaminRavid (eds.), The Jews of Early Modern Venice (Baltimore, 2001).

35 On the activities of Muslim and Christian pirates and corsairs in the Mediter-ranean, see Fernand Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in theAge of Philip II, trans. Sian Reynolds, 2 vols. (London, 1972–3), esp. ii, 865–91; PeterEarle, Corsairs of Malta and Barbary (London, 1970); Salvatore Bono, Corsari nelMediterraneo: cristiani e musulmani fra guerra, schiavitu e commercio (Milan, 1993);Robert C. Davis, Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean,the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500–1800 (Basingstoke and New York, 2003).

36 Unlike pirates, corsairs worked for a sovereign power which on the one handauthorized them by formal licence to attack hostile ships, and on the other obligedthem to hand over a portion of the booty. For those who were plundered or captured,though, it made little difference whether the attackers were pirates or corsairs. SeeBono, Corsari nel Mediterraneo, 9; Earle, Corsairs of Malta and Barbary, 6; Braudel,Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World, ii, 866–7.

37 On the establishment of the Order in Malta, see Mario Monterisi, Storia politica emilitare del sovrano ordine di S. Giovanni di Gerusalemme detto di Malta, ii, L’ordine aMalta, Tripoli e in Italia (Milan, 1940), 12–16.

38 Earle, Corsairs of Malta and Barbary, chs. 5–8; Michel Fontenay, ‘Corsaires de lafoi ou rentiers du sol? Les chevaliers de Malte dans le ‘‘corso’’ mediterraneen au XVIIe

siecle’, Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, xxxv (1988); Bono, Corsari nelMediterraneo, 45–70. On Maltese ‘piracy’, see also Nicolas Vatin, L’Ordre de Saint-Jean-de-Jerusalem, l’Empire ottoman et la Mediterranee orientale entre les deux sieges deRhodes, 1480–1522 (Paris, 1994), 81–129.


were brought to Malta, where they were generally sold as oars-men for Christian galleys or as slaves for private households.39

From Michel Fontenay’s studies on the Maltese slave market, weknow that Jewish captives were a minority relative to Turkish andMoorish captives. Jewish women were especially rare on the slavemarket and could be sold for high prices, depending on theirphysical attractiveness and potential value for services in thehousehold.40

Mariana and Aaron were separated after their arrival in Malta,and as subsequent events reveal, the separation was permanent.Mariana was sold first to a Greek merchant, who then resold herto a Maltese nobleman named Fiamingo. Mariana had lived in hishouse only a few days when he took her to the church of SantaMaria di Valletta to be baptized. The certificate of baptism isdated 3 April 1607. The narrative of this conversion from Judaismto Christianity, told later in the Roman Sant’Ufficio, is as cen-tral as it is ambiguous. On the one hand, the baptism had all theelements of a forced conversion. Apparently, she hardly under-stood what was happening; in court, she recalled her amazementat the ritual. The priest dipped her head in the font, spread oil onher forehead, made a cross above her head and spoke Italianwords she did not understand. Only her Turkish friend explainedto her that she had been baptized. Faced with a Roman inquisi-tor, however, Mariana later emphasized that it had not occurredagainst her will. She pointed out that she had lived together withChristian servants in her father’s house and was therefore familiarwith the Christian faith: ‘When I was baptized I agreed to it, andif I had not been willing to agree I would not have gone to thechurch, andIwouldhavesaid toGirolamothat Ididnotwant tobea Christian, and in this sense I was not forced, but it was God’swill’.41

In Mariana’s narrative, the experience of baptism aroused con-flicting emotions. She was enslaved and did not resist the changeof religion, and yet she burst into tears when told that she wasnow a Christian and that she could not continue to live with her

39 Earle, Corsairs of Malta and Barbary, 169–70.40 Michel Fontenay, ‘Il mercato maltese degli schiavi al tempo dei cavalieri di San

Giovanni (1530–1798)’, Quaderni storici, cvii (2001); see also Earle, Corsairs of Maltaand Barbary, 168–78; Bono, Corsari nel Mediterraneo, 191–201.

41 ACDF, stanza storica, M 5-m, fasc. Roma 1624, fo. 490r.


husband. In the years that followed, however, Mariana seems tohave submitted willingly to Christian law.

She only stayed with the nobleman Fiamingo for a few months.After she became pregnant by him, he sold her to a nobleman inSicily. According to Mariana, her master was the secretary of themarchese di Vigliena, viceroy of Sicily, who held office between1606 and 1610.42 After serving him for about two years, she wasgranted her freedom. Equipped with a letter of recommendation,mariana and her little son went to Naples and began a new lifethere. Apparently she had no material worries, for when shemarried her second husband in 1615 she brought with her adowry of 400 ducats in gold, money and furniture.43 This was asmall fortune at the time and can only be explained by her workin the household of the Sicilian viceroy. She may have received itas ‘seed capital’ when she was freed.

In Naples, Mariana met Giovanni Domenico Morcante, herfuture second husband. According to Giovanni, she walked intohis shop one day to buy a hat, and, because he liked her, he askedfor her in marriage. Giovanni never questioned that Mariana wasa Christian. He later testified in court that ‘when the said Marianastayed with me, she lived as a good Christian [e vissuta da buonachristiana] who confessed and partook of Holy Communion, . . .and she has always eaten pork without a single murmur of pro-test’.44

Mariana and Giovanni spent the following years movingbetween Naples and Sorrento. Around 1620, Mariana expresseda wish to return to her homeland, Poland. It would soon becomeclear that her Jewish past played a major role in this plan. Giovanniexplained thatbecausehiswifehadconvincedhimthat theywoulddo well in Poland, he was not averse to the idea.45 Together theytravelled to Rome, seeking the advice of the Polish confessor ofSan Pietro. Because he did not advise them against it, Marianaand Giovanni embarked on their journey to Poland in September

42 The marchese di Vigliena and viceroy was Giovanni Fernandes Paceco. SeeGiovanni Evangelista di Blasi, Storia cronologica de’ Vicere, Luogotenenti e Presidentidel Regno di Sicilia, 5 vols. (1790–1; Palermo, 1974–5), iii, 25–40.

43 ACDF, stanza storica, M 5-m, fasc. Roma 1624, fo. 451v. According to the evi-dence Mariana gave in Venice, her dowryeven amounted to 500 ducats. Processi, ix, 86.

44 ACDF, stanza storica, M 5-m, fasc. Roma 1624, fo. 451r.45 Ibid., fo. 450r–v.


1622. When they arrived in Vienna, Mariana made a surprisingconfession, as Giovanni reported in court:

In Vienna the said Maria [Mariana] started telling me, ‘Listen, GiovanniDomenico, I have said nothing during the last seven years, but I amJewish and born into the Jewish faith, and I would like to go home, andif you would like to come with me you can live according to the Christianlaw and I will live according to the Jewish law’.46

Giovanni was strictly opposed to Mariana’s suggestion that theylive as a mixed couple. He immediately turned to a Catholicadviser, went to the nuncio of Vienna and was sent to the Jesuits,who acted as mediators for the couple. The result of this interven-tion is not clear from the trial documents; it is certain, however,that Mariana and Giovanni parted ways without knowing thefuture status of their marriage. Giovanni returned to Italy, andeven Mariana did not continue her journey to Poland. Despiteher wish to reconvert to Judaism, she held on to her marriage toGiovanni and asked him to wait for her in Venice.

For more than a century Venice had been an attractive place notonly for Levantines: it also served as a refuge for Jews from all overEurope. Although the Venetian Jews were enclosed in the city’sfamous ghetto, established in 1516, the city did grant them reli-gious freedom as well as the right to practise Jewish rituals andestablish synagogues within the boundaries of the ghetto.47 WhenMariana arrived in Venice, she and her son went to live in theghetto, where they lived at their own expense and performed oddjobs.48 According to testimony, the couple did keep in touch, andGiovanniwrote a series of letters toMariana.49 Marianawaited forher husband in vain, though: despite their agreement, Giovannidid not travel to Venice. He went instead to Rome, where hedenounced his wife to the Sant’Ufficio.

III

It must have been more than anger about his wife’s concealmentand deception that made Giovanni take this step. Historians ofcrime have shown that frequently people resorted to legal action

46 Ibid., fo. 450v.47 Roberta Curiel and Bernard Dov Cooperman, The Ghetto of Venice (London,

1990), 7–27; Riccardo Calimani, Storia del ghetto di Venezia (Milan, 1985).48 ACDF, stanza storica, M 5-m, fasc. Roma 1624, fo. 491r; Processi, ix, 88, 89.49 Processi, ix, 87–8, 89.


only after extra-juridical solutions had failed.50 Yet these findingsdo not readily apply to the Roman Inquisition. During the secondhalf of the sixteenth century the tribunal had effectively managedto establish a system under which the reporting of heresy wasobligatory. Edicts of faith, which called upon the population todenounce heretics and suspected heretics under threat of excom-munication, were published at regular intervals.51 Those whofailed to make such denunciations became suspect and riskedprosecution by the Inquisition.52 Auricular confession, in partic-ular, became a means of applying pressure. Confessors were notonly to remind the faithful of their statutory obligation to reportreligious offences, but also to refrain from absolving their sinsunless they presented themselves to the Sant’Ufficio. The believ-ers’ reporting practices, their lists of committed sins and the sal-vation of their souls thus became intertwined in a mechanism thatgreatly increased the pressure to appear in court.53 This does notmean that Giovanni was merely fulfilling his obligation when hewent to the Roman Sant’Ufficio, but such pressures to reportsuspected heretics may have encouraged him to do so.

It seems to me, however, that his rejection of a mixed mar-riage was even more important. Jewish–Christian marriageswere strictly forbidden by canon law.54 They contravened theprincipal aims of Christian marriage, undermined the religiouseducation of the children and jeopardized marital harmony.A mixed marriage was regarded as invalid on the basis of theimpedimentum disparis cultus.55 Tomas Sanchez, author of anauthoritative seventeenth-century marriage treatise, held that

50 Peter Blastenbrei, Kriminalitat in Rom, 1560–1585 (Tubingen, 1995), 33–8;Ulinka Rublack, Magd, Metz’ oder Morderin: Frauen vor fruhneuzeitlichen Gerichten(Frankfurt am Main, 1998), 34–44.

51 An overview of the edicts of faith of the Roman Holy Office is provided inInquisizione e indice nei secoli XVI–XVIII: controversie teologiche dalle raccolte casanatensi,ed. Angela A. Cavarra (Vigevano, 1998), 77–90.

52 Cesare Carena, Tractatus de Officio Sanctissimae Inquisitionis (1636; Cremona,1655), pt 2, tit. 9, xx1 and 2 and x9, no. 41.

53 For extensive research on the connection between the Inquisition and auricularconfession, see Prosperi, Tribunali della coscienza; Giovanni Romeo, Ricerche su con-fessione dei peccati e inquisizione nell’Italia del Cinquecento (Naples, 1997); ElenaBrambilla, Alle origini del Sant’Uffizio: penitenza, confessione e giustizia spirituale dalMedioevo al XVI secolo (Bologna, 2000).

54 Tomas Sanchez, Disputationum de sancto matrimonii sacramento, tomi tres (Antwerp,1607), disput. 71 (De impedimento disparis cultus), no. 5. See also Jean Gaudemet,Le Mariage en occident: les mœurs et le droit (Paris, 1987), 203–4.

55 Sanchez, Disputationum de sancto matrimonii sacramento, disput. 71, no. 1.


this impediment applied even when the ‘infidel’ partner had beenimproperly baptized.56 If it emerged in the course of the trial thatMariana had been baptized by force, and that she had neverstopped believing in Judaism, Giovanni could count on the annul-ment of his marriage.

But even if his opposition to a mixed marriage had nothing todo with an awareness of the possible invalidity of his marriage andthus with legal considerations, Giovanni could have had otherlegitimate fears. From a post-Tridentine Catholic perspective, inwhich Jewish–Christian marriages were taboo, marriage to aJewish woman must have seemed incompatible with honour-able life in society. In addition, differences of faith could threatenthe marital hierarchy and, in particular, diminish the husband’sauthority in the household.57 If patriarchal power and faith wereopposed to each other, Mariana might obey not her husband, butrather the prescriptions of her religion. Whether Giovanni fore-saw these problems relating to his salvation, his social reputationand his role as a husband, and whether he sought an annulmentor wished to force Mariana to return to him are questions thatmust remain open.

His report did not have immediate consequences for Mariana;the authorities did not approach her for about another year. Then,in April 1624, she was summoned before the Sant’Ufficio ofVenice. The tribunal had either been alerted to her presence byRoman officials or received other information. For Mariana, thetrial thus began in Venice.

IV

A successive reading of the Venetian and Roman documentsreveals that Mariana gave two wholly different accounts of herreligious identity. In Rome she tried to convince the inquisitors ofthe integrity of her Christian faith. In Venice, on the other hand,she argued that she had never abandoned her Jewish faith. Sheaffirmed the marriage to her Jewish husband, Aaron, her enslave-ment in consequence of an ‘infortunio maritimo’ and her subse-quent stay in Sicily and Naples. She did not, however, mention

56 Ibid., no. 3.57 Dagmar Freist has analysed these problems for confessionally mixed marriages:

see Dagmar Freist, ‘One Body, Two Confessions: Mixed Marriages in Germany’, inUlinka Rublack (ed.), Gender in Early Modern German History (Cambridge, 2002).


her baptism inMalta. Sheaccounted forher Christian lifebypoint-ing to the constraints of her situation. She lived in a Christiansociety and feared prosecution. Since 1541, when the Jews wereexpelled from the kingdom, Naples had been practically a citywithout Jews. Unlike other large Italian cities, it never establisheda ghetto.58

I have never pretended to be Jewish in order to save my life . . . I went tochurch because I couldn’t afford not to do so . . . but I have never con-fessed. I went to Mass because I liked listening to the sermons, but I neverkneeled down before any priest, neither in order to confess nor in order toreceive the Holy Communion . . . Asked whether her husband had askedher if she confessed and received the Communion, she replied: Yes, Sir,and I told him that I did . . . Asked whether she ate meat and forbiddenfood at times when Christians were not allowed to eat it, she answered:I ate what Christians ate on Fridays and Saturdays, but during Lent Imade the physicians give me permission because I was suffering frommy liver. Asked what she felt about our Christian faith, she answered: Iwas forced to stay with Christians and if I had had the intention of becom-ing a Christian I would have become a Christian the first day, and I wasenslaved. Asked about her marriage, she responded: My second husbandliked me and I liked him.59

Mariana characterized her Christian life as dissimulation for thesake of her security and of her affection for Giovanni. Accordingto her testimony she had practised certain customs of Christianlife, and resisted others. She went to Mass and adopted Christianeating habits, but avoided confession, observing Lent and makingthe sign of the cross. In other words, she described herself as acrypto-Jew who — while observing Christian pious practices asmuch as necessary in order to remain inconspicuous — alwayssecretly maintained her Jewish faith. In this narrative, it was im-portant for her to refuse some central Catholic rituals. Marianarepeatedly alleged that she had neither confessed nor taken Holy

58 On the expulsion of the Jews from the Kingdom of Naples, see David Abulafia,‘Il Mezzogiorno peninsulare dai bizantini all’espulsione (1541)’, in Vivanti (ed.), Gliebrei in Italia, i, esp. 35–44; Viviana Bonazzoli, ‘Gli ebrei del Regno di Napoli all’epocadella loro espulsione, I parte: il periodo aragonese (1456–1499)’, Archivio storicoitaliano, cxxxvii (1979), and ‘II parte: il periodo spagnolo (1501–1541)’, Archiviostorico italiano, cxxxix (1981). On the disappearance of Judaizers in Naples,see Giovanni Romeo, ‘La suggestione dell’ebraismo tra i napoletani del tardoCinquecento’, in Luzzati (ed.), L’Inquisizione e gli ebrei in Italia. On the cam-paigns against giudaizzanti during the second half of the sixteenth century, seePierroberto Scaramella, ‘La campagna contro i giudaizzanti nel Regno di Napoli(1569–1582): antecedenti e risvolti di un’azione inquisitoriale’, in his Inquisizioni,eresie, etnie, dissenso religioso e giustizia ecclesiastica in Italia (secc. XVI–XVIII)(Bari, 2005).

59 Processi, ix, 86–7.


Communion. This claim directly contradicted the testimony ofthe witness Angelo Balbi, who stated that Mariana had men-tioned her confessions to him.60 The inquisitors asked aboutthis several times for good reason, for if Mariana had observedCatholic rituals the accusation of Judaizing would have been validin their eyes.

After the first interrogation Mariana was taken into custody.Three weeks later she requested permission to write to her hus-band Giovanni in order to ask him to come to Venice. After a fur-ther two weeks she changed her mind. This time, she requestedpermission to travel to Rome herself in order to speak to her hus-band. She promised in return to be baptized after her arrival inRome — a baptism that had already taken place many years be-fore, as we know. The trial thus took a surprising turn. AlthoughMariana at first denied the circumstantial evidence of her Chris-tian faith, she now consented to convert to Christianity. Whenthe inquisitors wanted to send her to the Casa dei catecumenishe protested vehemently ‘that she knew perfectly well how tolive as a Christian and the duties of a Christian and also variousprayers’.61

Mariana’s wish to return to her husband, combined with herwillingness to convert, convinced the inquisitors. In June or Julyof 1624 she was transferred from Venice to Rome via Ancona.62 InRome she was taken into custody by the Roman Sant’Ufficio. Asin Venice, the Roman trial centred essentially on the accusationof Judaizing. Mariana’s second marriage was discussed only as asecondary issue. As was to be expected, Mariana told a differentstory in Rome. Her wish to return to Giovanni was inseparablefrom a Christian life. When Mariana asked for a hearing in Rome,she must have been aware of this. Travelling to Rome meant pre-senting herself as a committed Christian and, indeed, living aChristian life in future.

Here she provided a more detailed account of her life, includ-ing her time in Danzig, Tripoli and Malta. The description of herbaptism figured prominently in this narrative. She referred to herconversion as divine providence in order to emphasize the integ-rity of her faith. She mentioned details such as the cohabitation of

60 Ibid., 89.61 Ibid., 92.62 ACDF, stanza storica, M 5-m, fasc. Roma 1624, fo. 471r.


Christians and Jews in her father’s household in Danzig. As-serting that she had been instructed in the Catholic faith, shecited the Lord’s Prayer, the Ave Maria, the Apostles’ Creed andthe Ten Commandments.63 Giovanni’s statement and the evi-dence of the Viennese Jesuits, which documented her wish to re-convert to Judaism, went against Mariana’s version of events.64

Yet Giovanni also testified to Mariana’s having lived in accord-ance with the Christian faith and rituals. She herself protestedthat she had always respected Christian law. ‘After being bap-tized, I did not adhere in the least to Hebrew law, and I believedthe Christian faith to be completely true and good, and if I hadnot had this will, I could have gone to the Levant while I was inVenice’.65

Unlike Giovanni, Mariana presented her ‘confession’ in Viennaas part of a marital dispute in which she had spoken in anger.The inquisitor reproached her with having lived in the Venetianghetto. Mariana justified her behaviour, however, as necessitatedby external circumstances in a difficult situation:

When I arrived in Venice I went to the ghetto of the Jews in order to livehonourably and to be accepted as a daughter of the Jews and of the Jewishrace. During the day, I stayed among Christians. In the evening, Ireturned to the ghetto, observing as much as possible the Christian law,although I was forced to eat cheese and eggs during Lent. But I never atemeat on Fridays or Saturdays, and I did not go to Mass and I did notconfess. I always intended to return to Rome and join my husband, butI was afraid of the Inquisition because I had lived in the ghetto of the Jewsin Venice.66

This evidence was insufficient to clear Mariana of the suspicionof heresy. According to the logic of inquisitorial law, a suspicion ofheresy — which in Mariana’s case had arisen from her expressedwish to return to Judaism and her sojourn in the Venetian ghetto— could be removed only by interrogation under torture.67 On3 December 1624, a scant three months after the beginning of

63 Ibid., fo. 491v. The exact wording of the prayers was not recorded. While the TenCommandments were a fundamental component of both the Jewish and the Christianreligions, the Ave Maria and the Apostles’ Creed were clearly Catholic prayers.

64 Ibid., fo. 454r.65 Ibid., fo. 491r.66 Ibid., fos. 490v–491r.67 On the routine application of torture, see Peter Schmidt, ‘Tortur als Routine’, in

Peter Burschel, Gotz Distelrath and Sven Lembke (eds.), Das Qualen des Korpers: einehistorische Anthropologie der Folter (Cologne, 2000). See also John Tedeschi, ‘TheOrganization and Procedures of the Roman Inquisition: A Sketch’, in his Prosecutionof Heresy, 141–6; Siebenhuner, Bigamie und Inquisition in Italien, 61.


the trial, she was interrogated under torture for a quarter ofan hour. Again she asserted her Catholic faith and denied secretJudaizing.

V

Historians of crime have written much about the possibilitiesand limitations of trusting and interpreting court records.68 His-torians of the Spanish Inquisition, in particular, have debatedwhether trials against New Christians reflect the ideology of theinquisitors or the reality of crypto-Jewish practices.69 Today,however, many historians agree that the reproaches againstJudaizers were not mere inventions of the inquisitors and that thesources may be regarded as relatively trustworthy.70 The writersof the interrogation records were obliged to be accurate in everydetail, and notaries had to confirm the authenticity of the records.Many cases of the Roman Sant’Ufficio and the Spanish Inquisi-tion have come down to us only as summaries, but in Mariana’scase we have the interrogation records themselves and can assumethat they give an accurate account of the testimonies and thecourse of the trial.

How trustworthy, however, is Mariana’s narrative itself? Is herstory too fantastic to be true? Not at all. Her biography is plausiblein the context of the Jewish diaspora of the sixteenth and seven-teenth centuries. For many Jews, life in the diaspora was char-acterized by long-distance mobility and multiple changes oflocation. It was not unusual for individuals or families to movefrom Madrid to Bordeaux, from Amsterdam to Venice or fromVenice to Saloniki.71 Samuel Pallache (c.1550–1616), for

68 For a summary, see Gerd Schwerhoff, Aktenkundig und gerichtsnotorisch: Ein-fuhrung in die historische Kriminalitatsforschung (Tubingen, 1999), 61–8.

69 In the 1960s, Antonio Jose Saraiva argued that the accusation of Judaizing wasused as a pretext to proceed against the conversos, who were fast becoming a consid-erable economic force. The central arguments of the ensuing controversy are docu-mented in Saraiva, Marrano Factory, appendices 1–2. Independently of this debate,Benzion Netanyahu has argued that crypto-Judaism was essentially a creation of in-quisitorial persecution: see Netanyahu, Marranos of Spain.

70 See, for example, Jean-Pierre Dedieu, ‘The Archives of the Holy Office of Toledoas a Source for Historical Anthropology’, in Gustav Henningsen and John Tedeschiwith Charles Amiel (eds.), The Inquisition in Early Modern Europe: Studies on Sourcesand Methods (DeKalb, 1986), 168–9; John Edwards, ‘Was the Spanish InquisitionTruthful?’, Jewish Quart. Rev., lxxxvii (1997), 365; Gitlitz, Secrecy and Deceit, 76–9.

71 Israel,DiasporaswithinaDiaspora;Graizbord,Souls inDispute;Greyerz, ‘PortugueseConversos on the Upper Rhine’; Pullan, Jews of Europe, 211–28.


example, commuted as a political agent and entrepreneur be-tween Fez, Madrid and Amsterdam.72 In this context Mariana’smoves between Danzig, Tripoli, Naples and Venice were notexceptional. Given the activities of pirates and corsairs in theMediterranean, her captivity and enslavement were also not im-probable. Moreover, her stay and conversion in Malta have beenverified through the certificate of baptism that was submitted asa copy to the Roman inquisitors.

It is far more difficult to answer the questions concerningMariana’s faith. She painted two different portraits of her faithbefore two different courts. In Venice she presented herself as aforced convert who had merely pretended to live as a Christian,while in Rome she convinced the inquisitors of her Christianfaith. She produced a coherent story in both trials, including de-tails and arguments in her favour. In an environment of fear,threat and disinformation, the accused always pursued strategiesthat promised rescue. Obviously, Mariana would have tried any-thing to avert a sentence for Judaizing. On the other hand, she wasnot a prisoner of her situation. Her deliberate silence on the sub-ject of her baptism and her request to travel to Rome demonstratethat she was not helpless. She emerges from the interrogationrecords as a resolute and intelligent woman, despite her inabilityto write. Given her defence strategy and varying depictions of herchosen religion, an enquiry into her ‘true’ faith does not seem verypromising.

More than true religious convictions, her story reveals thestrategies and ambivalences associated with a change of religion.The seemingly perfect adoption of the new faith, its doctrine andthe requisite pious practices enabled her to integrate success-fully into Christian society. This outcome is supported not onlyby Mariana’s release from enslavement but also by her secondmarriage, since categories such as trustworthiness and ortho-doxy always played a role in the arrangement of a marriage.73

Before the wedding, two witnesses testified that Mariana wasunmarried, a circumstance that also points to her ability to estab-lish a network of new relationships after she arrived in Naples.

72 Mercedes Garcıa-Arenal and Gerard Wiegers, A Man of Three Worlds: SamuelPallache, a Moroccan Jew in Catholic and Protestant Europe (Baltimore and London,2003).

73 Angiolina Arru, ‘Il prezzo della cittadinanza: strategie di integrazione nella Romapontificia’, Quaderni storici, xci (1996), 166.


Neither the personswho made these testimonies nor her husbandseem to have had any inkling of her Jewish past.

Her conversion and her Christian life were first and foremosta matter of survival, freedom and social integration. As she saidin Venice, she lived as a Christian for the sake of security and forlove of her husband. Her change of religion was connected to cer-tain perspectives. Her Catholic life in Naples allowed her notmerely a certain social and material security, but also a marriagein which Mariana and her husband ‘liked each other’.74

Although in Venice she alleged that she had been dissimulating,she must have developed a Christian identity. After her baptism in1607 she lived according to Christian customs for fifteen years.In her testimonies she affirmed her familiarity with the Christianfaith and its rituals. She knew the central teachings of Catholicismbecause she had received instruction after her baptism, attendedMass, listened to sermons and prayed. At least in part, she hadadopted and engaged in Catholic pious practices.

Perhaps she found ways of remaining loyal to the Jewish religionwithin her everyday Christian life. More than her testimony, herdeparture for Poland points to the continuity of her Jewish faith.Mariana expressed her wish to return to her home country afterhaving lived a secure life in Naples for about a decade. Whatcaused her to give up this stable existence in Naples? The confes-sion in Vienna shows that her desire to return openly to Judaismwas an important motive. Although not mentioned in the trials,her son may have played an important role too. Many Sephardicrabbis held the view that the children of a converted Jewishwoman were still Jews.75 In the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-turies, Jewish identity was a matter not just of faith but also oflineage. Mariana thus had to enlighten her son about his Jewishidentity by birth. When the couple set off for Poland, he was about14 years old. According to Jewish law, this was the age at whicha boy entered the world of adults.76 Many converso families in-formed their sons about their Jewish origins and the Jewish reli-gion at this age.77 Perhaps Mariana intended to do exactly this

74 Processi, ix, 87.75 David Nirenberg, ‘Mass Conversion and Genealogical Mentalities: Jews and

Christians in Fifteenth-Century Spain’, Past and Present, no. 174 (Feb. 2002), 20–1.76 Milano, Storia degli ebrei, 556.77 Gitlitz, Secrecy and Deceit, 218–23. In converso families, it often was the woman’s

role to pass on the religion. See Renee Levine Melammed, ‘Sephardi Women in


(cont. on p. 27)

when she pressed for a return to Poland. All we know for certainis that mother and son stayed together in the Venetian ghetto. AsMariana was on her own when she was transferred to Rome, wecan assume that her son remained in Venice.

If the departure for Poland marked one turning point,Mariana’s change of attitude in Venice marked another. As men-tioned above, she decided to profess her faith in the CatholicChurch and to return to her husband Giovanni. However, shehad nursed this idea even before being taken into custody. AngeloBalbi gave the following testimony concerning his conversationswith Mariana: ‘She told me that she had the intention of becom-ing a Christian because she liked him [Giovanni]’, and ‘I havetalked several times to this woman, who told me that she wantsto go to Rome and find her Christian husband, to whom she isdrawn by feelings of affection’.78 The relationship with Giovanni,then, was a major reason for living as a ‘buona christiana’.79

Although Mariana lived as a Jew in the ghetto, she kept in touchwith Christians and even with converts.80 It was no accident thatshe confided in Angelo Balbi: according to his own testimony,‘She dared to speak to me because I told her that I was Jewish, too,and have become a Christian’.81 Balbi shared Mariana’s experi-ence of two religious worlds. Her plan to return to Catholicismeven before she was caught by the Inquisition shows that shecould not put aside her Christian identity by entering the ghetto— just as she could not put aside her Jewish identity after baptism.

Mariana lived between two religious worlds. She was convertedby force, lived as a Christian, reconverted to Judaism and thenreturned to Catholicism. She was familiar with both faiths. Herreligious identity was anything but clear. Rather than changingher faith once and for all, she remained poised between the tworeligions. Neither did her conversion in Malta imply a clear break

(n. 77 cont.)

the Medieval and Early Modern Periods’, in Judith R. Baskin (ed.), Jewish Womenin Historical Perspective (Detroit, 1991), esp. 126–7; Foa, Jews of Europe after theBlack Death, 70–1.

78 Processi, ix, 89–90.79 Ibid., 92: ‘se mio marito mi vora, mi contento di farmi battizzare et viver da buona

christiana’.80 Angelo Balbi quondam Salomonis de Castrofranco converted to Catholicism in

1611. Processi, ix, 89.81 Ibid., 90.


with Judaism, nor was the will to reconvert that she expressed inVienna definitive. Mariana’s attitude wavered between Jewish con-victions, Christian habits and dissimulation, between an openadherence to Judaism and adherence to the Catholic Church. Inthis she resembled many conversos, whose religious identitiesoscillated along a continuum, with committed New Christians atone end and zealous New Jews at the other. Between these polesa wide range of attitudes was possible, from inner wavering orsyncretistic practices and beliefs to indifference and scepticism.82

Each positioning on this spectrum related to an individual situ-ation and the interplay of spiritual, social, economic and emotionalneeds, possibilities and constraints. At the religious turningpoints in her biography — the baptism in Malta, the departurefor Poland and the return to Rome — Mariana, too, must haveweighed and compared these factors. She was neither a scepticnor an opportunist. Her life in Sicily and Naples was associatedwith certain perspectives, as was her confession in Rome. Oppor-tunism was not one of them, however. Mariana was a complexwoman who tried to harmonize her religious attitudes with thecircumstances in which she found herself.83 Although living asa Christian was essential in her situation as a slave, she later riskedreligious persecution and her marriage in order to return to Juda-ism and, perhaps, to initiate her son into the Jewish religion. Afterthe events in Vienna and her capture in Venice, her circumstanceschanged once again. Mariana now knew that her husband re-jected the idea of a mixed marriage, and that her son, who hadreached the age of about 16, could earn a living on his own ifnecessary.84 She also knew that even in the ghetto, where shecould practise Judaism freely, her Christian identity did notsimply fade away. In this particular situation Mariana madeyet another decision — this time in favour of her marriage andof the Christian faith.

This outcome suggests that for Mariana, the Christian andJewish worlds remained ultimately incompatible. Some converts

82 In this regard, see also Revah, ‘Les Marranes’, 53, 58; Yerushalmi, From SpanishCourt to Italian Ghetto, 34–5; Pullan, Jews of Europe, 242; Greyerz, ‘Portuguese Con-versos on the Upper Rhine’, 77; Gitlitz, Secrecy and Deceit, 85–90.

83 A similar interpretation has been suggested by David Graizbord for the case ofAntonio Rodrıguez de Amezquita: see Graizbord, Souls in Dispute, 160, 167.

84 Mariana’s son worked as a water-bearer in the ghetto. Processi, ix, 89.


managed to combine the best of both religious worlds.85 ButMariana’s story reveals how torn she actually was. Her hope thatshe and her husband could live as a mixed couple may be read asan attempt to unify the Christian and the Jewish worlds and toavoid losing either Giovanni or her son. Each of the two worldsseemed to be incarnated in a person. Whereas her husbandGiovanni stood for the Christian world, her son represented thecontinuity of the Jewish world. Living in Poland or in the Venetianghetto meant losing Giovanni. Life in Rome, on the other hand,meant refraining from any open profession of Judaism as wellas relinquishing a close relationship with her son if he stayed inthe Venetian ghetto. Ultimately, Mariana’s choice was not justbetween two religions, but also between two people, and betweenher role as a wife and that as a mother.

Her religious decisions were strongly influenced by her per-sonal relationships and her identity as a woman. At the beginningof her Christian life she was separated from her husband andbecame pregnant by a stranger who had become her master. Inthe years that followed, her motherhood and second marriage in-troduced a dilemma specific to female Jewish converts. By marry-ing Giovanni, Mariana had integrated into Christian societyand could live as an honourable woman. On the other hand, inde-pendent of her own religious choices, she had given birth to a sonwho tied her to the Jewish world. Faith, marriage and mother-hood were simultaneously interwoven and opposed to each other.They created a field of tensions in which she repeatedly had togive up something in order to gain something else.

VI

In sociological scholarship, conversions are normally definedas fundamental, religiously motivated turning points in a biog-raphy.86 Although there are many different issues at the centre of

85 Nicholas Griffiths, ‘The Best of Both Faiths: The Boundaries of ReligiousAllegiance and Opportunism in Early Eighteenth-Century Cuenca’, Bull. HispanicStudies, lxxvii (2000).

86 Monika Wohlrab-Sahr, Volkhard Krech and Hubert Knoblauch, ‘ReligioseBekehrung in soziologischer Perspektive: Themen, Schwerpunkte und Fragestellun-gen der gegenwartigen religionssoziologischen Konversionsforschung’, in HubertKnoblauch, Volkhard Krech and Monika Wohlrab-Sahr (eds.), Religiose Konversion:systematische und fallorientierte Konversionsforschung (Konstanz, 1998). On the con-cept of conversion, see also Eckhart Friedrich, Klaus Hartmann and Detlef Pollack,


(cont. on p. 30)

sociological research on conversion, such as its process, its rea-sons or its communicative aspects, there is a common under-standing of conversion as a radical change, a transition from onesystem of beliefs to another.87

This view is firmly rooted in the historical concept of conver-sion. First, the concept carries on the tradition of the first Chris-tian conversion narratives by the Apostle Paul and the churchfather Augustine. Whereas Paul described his experience of con-version as a singular moment of enlightenment, Augustine repre-sented it as a process of progressive theological discovery.88 Bothof them, however, fashioned the event as a fundamental turningpoint in their religious identities and created a model that wouldinfluence the description of conversion for centuries to come.89

Second, it was in the interest of the early modern authorities tolabel conversion as a permanent change. In Rome, for example,neophytes were not allowed to contact their former co-religion-ists. Their integration into Christian society was systematicallypromoted through marriage, financial support and other incen-tives.90 The actual conversion was carefully choreographed andstaged for the public in a ritualized baptism. Moreover, manyauthorities attempted to verify converts’ intentions. Seekingto avoid opportunistic changes of religion, they made convertsprove the sincerity of their beliefs through an examination.91

Finally, for many individuals conversion was indeed a definitive

(n. 86 cont.)

‘Kircheneintritt und Konversion: Kircheneintritte in einer ostdeutschen Großstadt— betrachtet aus der Perspektive der Konversionsforschung’, ibid., esp. 93–100.

87 Wohlrab-Sahr, Krech and Knoblauch, ‘Religiose Bekehrung in soziologischerPerspektive’, 8, 16. Ultimately, even models that conceptualize conversion as a processpresume a clear change of religion. See Lewis R. Rambo and Charles E. Farhadian,‘Converting: Stages of Religious Change’, in Christopher Lamb and M. Darrol Bryant(eds.), Religious Conversion: Contemporary Practices and Controversies (London andNew York, 1999). Massimo Leone describes the process of conversion in a similarway, but from an anthropological and semiotic point of view. A phase of the de-stabilization and crisis of the ‘I’ is followed by a phase of restabilization in which a newreligious identity is constructed. See Massimo Leone, Religious Conversion and Identity:The Semiotic Analysis of Texts (London and New York, 2004).

88 Paula Fredriksen, ‘Paul and Augustine: Conversion Narratives, Orthodox Tradi-tions and the Retrospective Self’, Jl Theol. Studies, xxxvii (1986).

89 Carlebach, Divided Souls, 90–2; see also D. Bruce Hindmarsh, ‘ ‘‘My Chains FellOff, My Heart Was Free’’: Early Methodist Conversion Narrative in England’, ChurchHist., lxviii (1999).

90 Caffiero, Battesimi forzati, esp. 265–89 and 299–325.91 Corpis, ‘Geography of Religious Conversion’, 324.


choice. The fact that some converts became missionaries andreligious zealots shows how radical conversion could be.92

Yet this understanding of conversion fails to describe ad-equately the reality of many other converts. This reality was char-acterized not by a clear change of religion but by the developmentof a coexisting religious world, by partial assimilation, syncretisticpractices and multiple conversions. Recently, Kenneth Mills andAnthony Grafton stated that ‘complete religious conversion —prescribed by change or pure transmission — was and is impos-sible to achieve’.93 One might add that these findings apply tothe research on Iberian conversos as well as to studies of conversionin missionary history and the confessional history of Europe.

The break between the old and the new faith was frequently notas clean as Catholic missionaries might have wished. Althoughthe Indians of New France accepted Christian beliefs in the sev-enteenth century, their native religion remained intact, as AllanGreer has shown.94 In this case, two religious worlds coexisted.In colonial Peru, on the other hand, the Christian religion fusedwith pagan traditions. For example, by taking the dead bodies oftheir ancestors into Catholic churches in order to ‘baptize’ them,the indigenous population of the Andes attempted to integratethe objects of former veneration into their new Christian faith.95

At the same time, Reformation Europe saw the emergence ofconfessional territories and interconfessional conversions. Some-times, ordinary people converted only after much vacillation.Nicholas Griffiths’s case study of Francesco Antonio, who wasput on trial for heresy by the Inquisition of Cuenca, illustrates thatthe protagonist could alternate perfectly between Catholicism

92 For example, some German Protestants who converted to Catholicism in thesixteenth and seventeenth centuries took on missionary functions. See Jurgen Stillig,‘Konversion, Karriere und Elitekultur. Profile kirchlicher Konvertitenfursorge:Ludolf Klencke und Barthold Nihus’, in Friedrich Niewohner and Fidel Radle(eds.), Konversionen im Mittelalter und in der Fruhneuzeit (Hildesheim, 1999). Inaddition, a few prominent Jewish converts wrote sharp polemics against theirformer religion. See Carlebach, Divided Souls, 52–6; Caffiero, Battesimi forzati,36–9.

93 Kenneth Mills and Anthony Grafton, ‘Introduction’, in Mills and Grafton (eds.),Conversion, p. x.

94 Allan Greer, ‘Conversion and Identity: Iroquois Christianity in Seventeenth-Century New France’, in Mills and Grafton (eds.), Conversion.

95 Peter Gose, ‘Converting the Ancestors: Indirect Rule, Settlement Consolidation,and the Struggle over Burial in Colonial Peru, 1532–1614’, in Mills and Grafton(eds.), Conversion.


and Protestantism. When he tried to combine elements of both,confessional differences faded.96 For some individuals, a changeof religion lasted all of their life and reflected the experience ofboth political and personal change.97 A conversion, then, wasrarely motivated by religious concerns alone. Normally, it wasconditioned by social contexts, familial tensions and economicand political ambitions as much as by confessional convictions.98

Whether they changed their religion or their confession, manyof these converts were extremely mobile. Their conversions wereoften connected with one or even several changes of location.99

Lutherans or Calvinists who wished to convert in Rome oftencompleted an odyssey through Europe before arriving there.Because of trade, military service or other cause for travel, con-verts came to Rome from Amsterdam via Corsica, to Livornofrom Alsace via Flanders, to Florence from Paris via Berlin, andso on.100 Being on the move meant crossing religious and cultu-ral borders and coming into contact with different religions orconfessions. The reports of converts from Protestantism in Romemake it clear that they had experienced Catholic rituals, had cometo know Catholic people and had entered into religious dialogue

96 Griffiths, ‘Best of Both Faiths’. For similar cases of confessional mixture in theNetherlands, see Christine Kooi, ‘Converts and Apostates: The Competition forSouls in Early Modern Holland’, Archiv fur Reformationsgeschichte, xcii (2001). Inthe context of confessional plurality and freedom of religion, some converts playeddown confessional differences: see Judith Pollmann, ‘A Different Road to God: TheProtestant Experience of Conversion in the Sixteenth Century’, in van der Veer (ed.),Conversion to Modernities, esp. 56–7. Converting from the Anglican to the RomanChurch could be a tiny step, as Michael Questier shows for Reformation England:see Michael Questier, ‘Crypto-Catholicism, Anti-Calvinism and Conversion at theJacobean Court: The Enigma of Benjamin Carier’, Jl Eccles. Hist., xlvii (1996). On thephenomenon of multiple conversions, see Martin Mulsow, ‘Mehrfachkonversionen,politische Religion und Opportunismus im 17. Jahrhundert: ein Pladoyer fur eineIndifferentismusforschung’, in Kaspar von Greyerz et al. (eds.), Interkonfessionalitat— Transkonfessionalitat — binnenkonfessionelle Pluralitat: neue Forschungen zur Konfes-sionalisierungsthese (Gutersloh, 2003).

97 See, for example, the case of Arnoldus Buchelius, in Judith Pollmann, ReligiousChoice in the Dutch Republic: The Reformation of Arnoldus Buchelius (1565–1641) (Man-chester and New York, 1998).

98 Frauke Volkland, ‘Konfession, Konversion und soziales Drama: ein Pladoyer furdie Ablosung des Paradigmas der ‘‘konfessionellen Identitat’’ ’, in Greyerz et al. (eds.),Interkonfessionalitat — Transkonfessionalitat — binnenkonfessionelle Pluralitat.

99 Corpis, ‘Geography of Religious Conversion’, esp. ch. 2.100 Jane Wickersham, ‘Results of the Reformation: Ritual, Doctrine and Reli-

gious Conversion’, Seventeenth Century, xviii (2003), 271, 273, 279; see alsoMatheus, ‘Mobilitat und Konversion’.


with them before deciding to convert.101 Moments of contactand exchange could thus become the crucial impetus for a grad-ual change of convictions or, indeed, a change of confession. Thisapplies to Iberian conversos aswell. The case of Antonio Rodrıguezde Amezquita, analysed by David Graizbord, illustrates nicelyhow trading New Christians met crypto-Jews on their travelsand converted as a result of these contacts.102 Although mobilitywas not a precondition for conversion, these phenomena wereoften linked. Mobility went along with cultural contact, whichin turn made conversion more likely.

The experience of migration was an essential factor inMariana’s conversions too. It was only her travels from Tripolito Venice and her experience of enslavement that catapulted herinto Christian society. Not until she was on her way to Poland,where she would have the opportunity to practise Judaism, didshe freely confess her Jewish origins to Giovanni. Changing placesmeant entering environments characterized by varying degreesof tolerance, and this played an important role in Mariana’s reli-gious choices.

Mobility, marriage, motherhood and religious decisions wereinterwoven in her biography. The baptism in Maltawas more thana mere religious act. It was accompanied by emigration, the lossof a husband, the experience of social and personal degradationthrough enslavement and a pregnancy by her first master. Herprofession of Judaism in Vienna and of Catholicism in Romewere also profoundly associated with her relationship to hersecond husband and her son. The complex nature of her conver-sion belies the notion of conversion as radical change.

A story like Mariana’s shows that religious identities weremulti-layered and often ambiguous. Religious choice was embed-ded in individual biography, where different experiences, desiresand roles competed. Faith, marriage and social environmentcould create strong points of tension. Conversion stories, then,provide insights into individual biographies and religious ambi-guities at a time when church and secular authorities were strivingfor religious clarity and demarcation. Religious boundaries were

101 Wickersham, ‘Results of the Reformation’, 269–71, 275–7; Matheus, ‘Mobilitatund Konversion’.

102 Graizbord, Souls in Dispute, 87–8, 143–67. Rodrıguez later reconverted toCatholicism — a choice that was partly motivated by economic misfortunes and hisexperience of Catholic piety in Zaragoza.


marked and anxiously guarded in the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies. In Rome — to return there one last time — the battleagainst heresy began in the 1540s and 1550s. At the same time,the authorities initiated policies of converting and ghettoizingJews. The Tridentine decrees lent Catholicism a clear-cut con-fessional profile and instituted a programme of a more Catholic,more moral and more disciplined society. This reflex of defenceand differentiation was accompanied by active promotion. TheCasa dei catecumeni as well as the Congregatio de propagandafide, the Congregatio de iis qui sponte veniunt ad fidem and theOspizio dei convertendi functioned as institutions that systemat-ically promoted conversion from Islam, Judaism, Protestantismor Calvinism to Catholicism.103 In this policy of fishing for souls,it was left to the inquisitors to secure the boundaries of the faithand return dissenters to the bosom of the Church.

Mariana minimized the accusation of dissidence by presentingherself to the Roman Sant’Ufficio as a committed Christian. Thisattitude must have been the reason for the inquisitors’ leniency.Despite some valid evidence of her apostasy, the trial endedharmlessly. Although questions concerning Mariana’s son andhis religion seemed self-evident, the inquisitors enquired no fur-ther about him. The records do not tell us whether he was bap-tized or circumcised, or whether he lived among Christians orJews, in the Venetian ghetto or somewhere else. This is remark-able, because normally the children of converts were heavily con-tested.104 Instead, the inquisitors examined in detail the matterof whether Mariana could continue to live with her husbandGiovanni. In a case of the conversion of one partner from theJewish to the Christian faith, canon law stipulated that the ‘in-fidel’ partner should be summoned and asked whether he orshe wished to follow his or her spouse.105 This was virtually

103 On the Casa dei catecumeni, see Caffiero, Battesimi forzati, as well as Rocciolo,‘Documenti sui catecumeni e neofiti a Roma nel Seicento e Settecento’; on theCongregatio de iis qui sponte veniunt ad fidem, established in the early seventeenthcentury, see Fosi, ‘Roma e gli ‘‘Ultramontani’’ ’; on the Ospizio, founded in 1673, seeSergio Pagano, ‘L’Ospizio dei Convertendi di Roma fra carisma missionario e rego-lamentazione ecclesiastica (1671–1700)’, Ricerche per la storia religiosa di Roma, x(1998), esp. 313–44, as well as Matheus, ‘Mobilitat und Konversion’.

104 Caffiero, Battesimi forzati, ch. 3.105 See, for example, ACDF, stanza storica, M 5-m, fasc. Roma 1691, fasc. Livorno

1705, fasc. Venezia 1721, fasc. Venezia 1678. The basis for legitimizing the secondmarriage and the praxis of invocation were the Privilegium Paulinum and a papal decreeof 1585 by Gregory XIII. See Gaudemet, Le Mariage en occident, 311; Arturo Carlo


(cont. on p. 35)

impossible in the case of Aaron, from whom Mariana had heardnot a word since their separation in Malta eighteen years previ-ously. On 5 September 1624, Pope Urban VIII (1623–44) there-fore decided that Mariana was exempted from the invocation,and could live with Giovanni.106 This sentence was perfectly inkeeping with the Inquisition’s policy in favour of sacramentalmarriage.107 As far as the offence of Judaizing was concerned,however, the final sentence did not mention any sanctions. Wemay assume that Mariana was released without being punishedor forced to abjure. What was crucial, no doubt, was Mariana’sremorseful behaviour, her affirmation of faith and unreservedconfession. That was, after all, what truly counted in the inquisi-tors’ battle for souls.

University of Basel Kim Siebenhuner

(n. 105 cont.)

Jemolo, Il matrimonio nel diritto canonico: dal Concilio di Trento al Codice del 1917 (1941;Bologna, 1993), 67.

106 ACDF, stanza storica, M 5-m, fasc. Roma 1624, fo. 505r. See also ACDF, stanzastorica, Decreta 1624, fos. 190v–191r.

107 On the Inquisition’s marriage policy, see Siebenhuner, Bigamie und Inquisition inItalien, chs. 7–8.


Documents

CONVERSION,MOBILITYANDTHE ROMANINQUISITIONINITALY … · 2000).On Jewish religious border-crossing,see YosefH.Yerushalmi,FromSpan-ish Court to Italian Ghetto: Isaac Cardoso. A Study